


The Wall Between Us

by LittleKnownArtist



Category: Hazbin Hotel (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - 1920s, Alternate Universe - Human, Angst with a Happy Ending, Arson, Childhood Friends, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Happy Ending, Kisses, Making Out, Murder, Wallsexual, Wallsexual cult, lmao this got out of hand, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-22
Updated: 2020-04-22
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:13:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23789890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleKnownArtist/pseuds/LittleKnownArtist
Summary: 1910s-1920s AU - Human AUAlastor found a wall and then he found a lovely girl sitting atop that wall. He grew so very fond of that girl, and even when she wasn't around, the wall which held so many memories for them remained, and took on a life of it's own.
Relationships: Alastor/Charlie Magne
Comments: 9
Kudos: 90





	The Wall Between Us

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MuseValentine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuseValentine/gifts), [Descendree](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Descendree/gifts).



The Wall Between Us.

"Oh no, I don' think so, four eyes, y'ain't playin wid us."

"Yeah, go play out in da swamp wi' da gators or som'in. Yeh pro'ly keep 'em betteh company. Dey don' care how much yuh talk so long as yuh taste like chicken."

Alastor rolled his eyes. It was going to be more of this as the summer rolled by. His family had moved across the city during the school year before in order to enroll him in a better school. Alastor had thought that when he started Secondary School he might have an easier time making friends given that there were more students, but as the school year went by he'd come up just the same. The children got along with him well enough during school hours, but after that, no one wanted anything to do with him. It was the same story with the first five years of his schooling, and the summers between looked like they might result to the same.

"Yuh know, fellas, I migh' jus' do that."

It was then that Alastor walked into the swamp. It wasn't far, but as he made his way through the brush to where the mangroves grew a little bit thicker he saw something he didn't expect through the leaves. At the edge of the Bayou where the water met the land was a large brick wall. And over the top of the wall he saw the highest branches of fruit trees and beyond that he could see the top of an old white and yellow house. The walls spanned in every direction, far enough that the edges were obscured by branches and dangling Spanish moss. He was curious. He touched his hand to the brick wall and followed it all the way to where it bent around the corner. He began following that side, even though he worried he may get turned around in the swamp. He followed it all the way to the great gate. It was a big wooden gate that opened to a narrow driveway, fresh hoofprints in the mud. He could hardly see through the slats. It didn't matter much to him anyways. There wasn't much to see on the other side besides leaves and bushes. 

There didn't seem to be any decent footholds on the wall or the gate, so he didn't see any way of climbing over to sate his curiosity further. So he followed the wall the direction that would lead him back to his home and stood before it. It was a nice and sturdy brick wall. He pulled out his rubber ball and begin to throw it against the wall, catching it when it bounced off. He did this for some time until suddenly, seemingly from nowhere he heard small voice.

"What are you doing?" 

Alastor startled but he did not scream. He looked around for the source of the voice, scanning back and forth. It was a girl's voice, about his same age.

"Who said that?"

"Up here!" Replied the voice. Alastor tilted his head back and looked up to the top of the wall where there was, in fact, a little girl sitting on top of it. She wore a pink dress that contrasted with her wild curly blond hair which was barely constrained by a black ribbon over her shoulder. She looked to be the same age as him, perhaps a year or two younger, and she eyes him with one brow raised and a smirk on her face.

And that was the start of it all.

Alastor and Charlotte became fast friends that day. She didn't seem to mind how his mouth never stopped once he got going. And she liked some of his more morbid jokes that earned him distasteful looks from the other children. He would crack jokes with her and she would bust up before relaying some of her own. They would toss the ball back and forth as they talked, or, rather, as Alastor talked. 

As it turned out, Charlotte, or Charlie as she preferred to be called, was a little rich girl. Alastor had guessed as much from the wall that she lived behind. He didn't mind this, he didn't understand the separation of social classes that so many people seemed focused on. He didn't mind that she was the daughter of some sort of businessman and she didn't care that he was the son of a shoemaker. She delighted in all that Alastor would tell her about his growing up in the world around them. Charlie didn't even go to school, she had private tutors that taught her everything a girl of twelve would need to know. 

Alastor had commented on the fact that she talked a little funny, and she replied back that the people around here sounded like they talked a little funny to her. She had come from the north and she said that everyone up north talked like she did. It was where she was from, originally. The two of them tried out each other's accents and only ended up sounding silly laughing about the accents the entire time, barely able to (and sometimes not able to) keep a straight face. They tried other accents as well. British accents she had heard friends of her parents use, and a common Atlantic one that they both heard on the radio. 

Together they spent long hours at this wall. Charlie was too scared to jump down. She didn't know how she would ever get back inside and Alastor couldn't find a good foothold the climb up. He'd considered bringing some rope for her to tie to the apple tree on her side of the wall but that seemed a little too much. 

As time passed, the days grew shorter and Charlie began throwing down ripened apples that grew on the tree she used to climb up onto the wall. It was always the same stretch of wall that they gathered by to talk, cracking jokes, playing ball for hours, eating apples and seeing how far they could throw the cores out into the Bayou. She even listened to him when he told her of the animal dissections he had made. It was the sort of things that made others squeamish, especially girls, but she would occasionally ask questions like ' _how does a toad's heart work if it only has three chambers?_ ' and ' _is a turtle's shell really its spine?_ ' with a simple curiosity that encouraged him. 

"You know, this wall is very special to me," Charlie said one chilly winter's day.

"How so?" Alastor had asked. She explained that it was the wall that faced her window and she had gotten permission to decorate it as she'd like. Between the scores of fruit trees she'd begun to paint a mural on it. Very carefully, she had begun painting a fantasy realm onto her side of the wall. Alastor asked if she was a good artist.

"My art tutor says I'm not very good at painting but my parents tell me otherwise. I don't know which is the case."

"I wish I could see your painting on that wall there." He asked if she had any canvases she could lower down for him to see. Charlie just shook her head. She'd get in a lot of trouble if she tried to smuggle a canvas out, something about dropping paint flecks onto the rugs.

Alastor smoothed his hand against the brick wall, felling its gritty texture. He wanted so desperately to see what her art looked like, and somewhere inside him he wondered why he took so much interest in this girl. He didn't quite know why he got along with her so well. No one else seemed to want to be around him outside of school his parents always shooed him out of the house, and his classmates avoided him. But Charlie was different. When he'd arrive at the wall her big doe eyes would sparkle with glee and she'd kick her feet from where they dangled over the wall. She was something else.

When they were fourteen Alastor noted something seems different about Charlie. Not in a bad way but he wasn't sure if it was in a good way either. He couldn't quite tell what it was but it seemed like the first time in his life he noticed how the light filtered through the leaves and how it caught some of the strawberry blonde highlights in her hair and it seemed to him the most beautiful color he'd ever seen. How her porcelain pale skin flushed to this healthy pink color when she'd laugh at some of his jokes. How her dark eyes, black as night, lingered on his just moments too long and they'd both look away with some confusing sort of embarrassment. How her laughter made him feel warm and content...

"I think I know where I can get some rope," Charlie said one day when they were sixteen. 

"I thought we gave up on that?" Alastor scoffed. 

"I know but..." she played with her nails.

"You keep telling me how nice different places are...how...Alastor, would you take me dancing some time?"

"Ha! Charlie," he laughed, without thought, without allowing himself time to read her implications, or for tact "isn't that sort of a "couple" thing to do?" His face felt warm.

She flushed, her expression turning slightly annoyed. 

"I--uh... _maybe_?"

"...maybe?" He repeated, bringing his eyes back up to meet hers. They were unreadable.

"You...have _those_ sorts of feelings for me?" And with that, Charlie's face flamed red and she started to disappear behind the wall. Alastor frantically banged his fist against the wall shouting: "Hold on! Hold on! I-I feel the same!"

Charlie's head poked back over the top of the wall from where she had been climbing down the apple tree. Her face was still flushed but she smiled and then Alastor smiled and then they laughed.

The Friday after Charlie had tested that the rope could hold her weight, she secured one end to her apple tree and then threw the other over the wall. When she climbed down Alastor wrapped her in a biggest hug, like a long lost friend who he hadn't seen in years. Really, he _had_ never seen her up close. Not this close. 

The two of them ran into the city and danced the afternoon away. For the first time in his life Alastor felt whole. When he held her, twirled her, spun her around and even dipped her. He realized that he'd been quite honest with himself when he'd said he had a crush on her. The smell of her perfume, the texture of her long golden curls, how warm and lithe her body felt. He liked it. He liked it a lot. He loved it. He could tell she felt the same. Before she climbed back up the rope, she pressed a kiss against his lips. He startled and she drew back immediately, apologizing for being so forward.

"I just wasn't expecting it was all," Alastor said, coming to hold her face in his hands. Her eyes focused back on his. Her lips were painted with a color that was just a little too mature for her, but Alastor didn't mind it. He rubbed his thumbs over her cheeks and felt her lean into the touch. Seeing her eyes flutter closed contentedly almost made him weak in the knees.

"Do you wanna try again?" 

She opened her eyes and smiled. He pressed their lips together again and relished in the warmth of her skin. Their hands fumbled around nervously, unsure, but Alastor balled his hand into a fist to avoid touching where he shouldn't, settling on the small of her back while hers held his shoulders. Neither knew how or when to breathe, so they broke only a moment later, quiet laughter in their throats.

"One more?" Charlie asked, holding up a single finger. She blinked up at him innocently, and so he obliged. One turned into two, two into three, and soon enough Charlie's back hit the solid surface of that brick wall that held so many memories for them. Alastor's knuckles scraped against the rough brick and he enjoyed the coolness of it against his clothed forearm as he trapped Charlie in. It was such a contrast from her blissfully warm figure. He wanted to remember this, his first kisses, his first outing with a girl and how **_scandalous_** it was that Charlie had snuck out of her encasing walls just to dance with him. Just to scrape her nails against his neck and kiss his jaw. He wanted to remember every moment of it, how the wall shaded them, hid them from the dwindling sun.

But for something to be a memory, it has to be in the past. He pulled away to comb through the long curls which had escaped her black ribbons. They were still too young, and this was too fast. Her family would be worried if she stayed in the garden too long, if the sun set before she came inside. He looked away so as to not glimpse anything under her dress as he lifted her to stand on his shoulders and finish the climb up the rope and over the wall. She wished him well, and she'd be glad to go dancing again the _**next week.**_

 _Alastor wasn't the same after the fire_.

Arson is what the papers said, and Alastor didn't doubt that was the case. Charlie's home had burned to the ground with its occupants inside. It had caught some of the swamp on fire as well. It was weeks before Alastor could return to see if there was anything left. Any hope his sweet Charlie could have made it out of the blaze. Rumors spiraled about the state of the hows and whys and the what ifs but the one Alastor most hoped for were the rumors that the family had made it out and were in hiding. Charlie's father made some business deals which turned a profit for him, but not for the other parties, and it was said they already had suspects.

Alastor hoped that Charlie had made it out, but when he finally made his way to what was once her property, his heart sunk straight past his feet. There wasn't an inch of what were once buildings that weren't charred and scorched. Everything that Alastor could see was brown and black and grey. There didn't seem to be a single stone untouched by the blaze. He surveyed the property for quite a while, wondering what exactly is it looked like while the buildings were still standing. He wondered what parts of the garden Charlie would have sat in most. She'd mentioned she'd like to sit in the sun and make craft items from straw and grass and feathers. And then he saw it. It was a small stretch of solid brick spanning 20 feet in a line. When he realized where the wall was he began running towards it because positioned where it was, he knew exactly what stretch that part was. It was the part of the wall did Charlie always sat atop when they held conversations. It was the part of the wall that sat against the apple trees the Charlie picked from and threw their fruits down to him. It was the part of the wall that was directly opposite her bedroom window, and it was the part of the wall that she painted the mural upon.

It was blackened. Her mural was gone. Alastor crumbled against it, breathing shallowly. He laid his hand against the solid brick encased in black almost expecting to be burned as if the fire was still roaring behind him and the bricks had absorbed the heat from it, but no, it was cold. It was cold enough against the skin that it reminded him of that day just weeks ago when he and Charlie had gone dancing. It reminded him of the kisses they shared and the laughter when they needed to part. It reminded him so much more than that. He realized then that his hand came away black from the soot. And when he looked back against the wall to where his hand had been he saw something which intrigued him. The black hadn't just contaminated him, it had rubbed off the wall. In a haze of grey he could see something beneath it. Wetting his thumb, he brought it back to the brick and begin to rub against the gray sooty surface. And as he rubbed away the darkened color, beneath he saw something wonderful. It was a blue color. He saw then that it was the wing of a bluebird flying in the mural which Charlie had begun painting as a small child. 

He looked up at the wall and stood back. If only for his own selfish reasons, he wanted to see her art. To have that small little reminder of her and the amazing person she was. He didn't know for sure if she had perished, or if the rumors of her survival were true, but he needed this. He needed to see this bit of wall cleaned and see for himself whether her tutor was right or if it was her parents all along. 

He spent days carefully cleaning the brick wall avoiding chipping any of the underlying paint until a beautiful mural bloomed before him. Charlie and painted birds and castles and a dragon and all sorts of things that little girls read in fairy tale books. It was a bit childish but the detail she put into the scales of the dragons and the leaves on the trees the color and contrast was so real so lifelike that Alastor couldn't help but stare in awe. Just think, she had begun painting this when she was in her preteen years and it was something spectacular. Her tutor had been wrong. Charlie had been an excellent painter especially considering her youth. When it was done he gazed upon the wall and he realized that this was a part of Charlie he's never gotten to see. He'd wanted to see it but he'd never had the opportunity to while she was still living here. Heat needed to see this and... He needed something else too. He needed to see to the end of those who had either attempted or who had taken Charlie from him.

Even as he began his life apart from his parents, working multiple part-time jobs until he finally landed himself somewhere successful, he always came back to the wall. The wall wasn't just the memories that he and Charlie shared. The wall had become an entity in of itself. By the time he was 22 and he landed that position at the radio station, and by the time he'd killed half a dozen men an association with the arson and the conspiracy behind it, he knew every remaining brick of the wall. He knew where the mortor was smooth and where it was lumpy. He knew the sound it made when he knocked out jokes against it or he threw a ball against it like he had as a child. He knew that wall about as well as an ordinary man should know his lover. He knew every part of it, how the temperature of the brick changed with the season and with the days. The individual colors of each red, orange and ruddy brick. 

Sometimes he would pass the time leaned against it, trailing his hand back and forth against its rough surface. He learned to love the texture of it. He wpuld rub his cheek against it almost lovingly. He remembered the day he kissed Charlie then, how his knuckles had been scuffed between her back and its surface. This wall was something sacred to him. Something special. He talked to it sometimes, pretending it would hear him. Like he was losing it. He may very well be, he figured. He hadn't stopped at the arsonists. He had always been something morbid, even when he was young and kept his dissections to small animals. Charlie hadn't minded the animals, but he supposed she would mind the men he had done the same to. The wall didn't mind though. He'd dumped a dozen or so of the bodies near this wall, when the tides swelled and the gators were hungry.

The wall couldn't mind.

Even though he revered it's solidity against his back, it's warmth when the chilly night fell on hot days, its ragged texture...no, even if he sometimes talked as if it had its own soul, it was a brick wall, with a beautiful mural on one side, painted by a beautiful girl, who had, in fact, had a beautiful soul...

The wall itself was just that.

But somehow he loved this wall all the same. As if its company were the warmth of a human body. A living body.

It was something special for him and him alone. So the day he came upon someone else gazing up the wall he was taking the back entirely. And when he looked it figure, really looked at them, he almost stopped breathing. His heart began to pound in his chest and he approached them making sure they heard the sounds of his feet stepping through leaves and grasses.

"You know," the woman said, barely giving Alastor a glance, "I used to know this bespectacled little boy that would visit this wall often." She turned her head towards him then, the motion stirring her bobbed blonde curls. Her gaze met Alastor's, and his chest bloomed with warmth. Her midnight dark eyes stared straight through him, into the very depths of his soul. As they always had.

"How funny, I used to know a little blonde girl who always sat atop the wall." He took a step towards her, suddenly, uncharacteristically unsure. He wondered if he had finally cracked, finally lost his mind, and this hallucination, this gorgeous, amazing hallucination was all in his mind. The hair was something he didn't think he'd conjure himself though. He'd loved her long locks, but there was so much charm and playfulness in her new bob that he wanted to twirl a ringlet about his finger.

"Of course," she said, and he could tell she was checking his left hand for a ring, and he spotted hers without one as well, "that was twelve years ago. That little boy would be grown by now." 

"Charlie..."

"It's good to see you, Al. Good to be back in the city. I couldn't come back until--but now I--"

He wrapped her up in his arms and she sighed against his chest. She was warm, solid and very real. Just as solid as the wall that had separated them and also brought them together all those years ago. The two of them leaned against the wall, their wall, and began the arduous process of reliving the last twelve years of their life for one another.

**Author's Note:**

> Wallsexual cult jokefic which got out of hand.


End file.
